An assessment of potential oil spill damage to salt marsh habitats and fishery resources in Galveston Bay, Texas

We sampled nekton, benthic infauna, and sediments in salt marshes of upper Galveston Bay, Texas to examine relationships between habitat use and sedim ent hydrocarbon concentration. Most marsh sediment samples were contaminate d with relatively low concentrations of weathered petroleum hydrocarbons. W e found few statistically significant negative relationships between animal density and hydrocarbon concentration (6 of 63 taxa examined using simple linear regression). Hydrocarbon concentration did not contribute significan tly to Stepwise Multiple Regression models we used to explore potential rel ationships between animal densities and environmental parameters; in most c ases where hydrocarbon concentration was an important variable in the model s, the relationship was positive (i.e., animal densities increased with hyd rocarbon concentration). Low hydrocarbon concentrations in sediments of upp er Galveston Bay marshes could have contributed to our results either becau se levels were too low to be toxic or levels were toxic but too low to be d etected by most organisms. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.